What are those...?

Schris22

Just wanted to ask a question to some things that I don't know are...which there are plenty...go ahead and ask away if you have a question...


Question 1: What are those guys doing from the city dept. that have tripods and laser looking things on top of them. They are always at intersection and on the side of roads. What are they doing? Surveying is that what it's called? Are they looking at changes of elevation? Traffic patterns?

Question 2: What are the cables that are strewn across the road and are attached to some box with the city dept seal on it. Does this just measure activity? Can it monitor speed, what if an 18 wheeler goes over it, can it tell, or is it counted as 2and 1/4 of a car?

I'll think of some more later.

Please answer my noob questions,


Chris

beardog03

the cables are counters

The tri-pods are engineers that are surveying to do road work , or building something

Schris22

I see.

Thanks beardog.

I thought of another one for the gun fans.

I recently saw Stir of Echos and a guy was trying to kill someon silently and so he put a pillow over the end of the gun.

Would this actually work? Seems like it wouldn't but I don't know anything as you can see.

Chris

madmax

Schris22 wrote:

I see.

I recently saw Stir of Echos and a guy was trying to kill someon silently and so he put a pillow over the end of the gun.

Would this actually work? Seems like it wouldn't but I don't know anything as you can see.

Chris

Sooo.... What are you planning?
madmax

jcaut

Sounds to me like you're wanting to knock somebody off and are trying to figure out who's watching... I think I'll call the cops. Where do you live?


Heh, heh. Max beat me to it!

unc2701

sorta. You'd need a subsonic round and a gun with a sealed chamber (ie not a revolver)

see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppressor

and it still wouldn't work too well.

heiney9

Q1-That is a survey crew. They are doing metes and bounds measurements of parcels of land. If it's in a subdivision then it could typically be lot/block notations. I'm in the title insurance business. If you own a home/property your deed and mortgage have to have a "legal" description. Surveying property is a way of breaking it up for each individual person to own. That's what a survey crew does. If it's a city crew then they are on city/state business.

They are measurements usually based on the prime meridian, Expressed as degrees, minutes and seconds. Basically logitude and lattitude measurements, again unless it's in a sub, then the subdivision has been plated and then they refer to a lot/block in a particular subdivision.

ie; Lot 15 in Block 7 of RockRiver subdivision a sub of part of the Northwest Quarter of Section 14 Township 24 North Range 5 East of the 4th Principle Meridian....etc.

Land is essentially set up on complicated 2-d grid, a survey tells you exactly in words and measurements where the land is located.

H9

P.s. Sorry for the long explanation.

Schris22

no I do know a guy who wants to take me to the gun range. But that was just a general question

Anyone else have any questions they were just wondering?

Chris

Schris22

heiney9 wrote:

Q1-That is a survey crew. They are doing metes and bounds measurements of parcels of land. If it's in a subdivision then it could typically be lot/block notations. I'm in the title insurance business. If you own a home/property your deed and mortgage have to have a "legal" description. Surveying property is a way of breaking it up for each individual person to own. That's what a survey crew does. If it's a city crew then they are on city/state business.

They are measurements usually based on the prime meridian, Expressed as degrees, minutes and seconds. Basically logitude and lattitude measurements, again unless it's in a sub, then the subdivision has been plated and then they refer to a lot/block in a particular subdivision.

ie; Lot 15 in Block 7 of RockRiver subdivision a sub of part of the Northwest Quarter of Section 14 Township 24 North Range 5 East of the 4th Principle Meridian....etc.

Land is essentially set up on complicated 2-d grid, a survey tells you exactly in words and measurements where the land is located.

H9

P.s. Sorry for the long explanation.

So those guys check boundries/borders of property? They would only do this on new property though, because your long/lat and whatnot aren't going to change in relation to the prime meridian, right?

Chris

unc2701

Schris22 wrote:

So those guys check boundries/borders of property? They would only do this on new property though, because your long/lat and whatnot aren't going to change in relation to the prime meridian, right?

Chris

Nope- let's say someone added a building to the property you're buying. You'd want to do a survey to make sure that it's a sufficient distance from the property lines for your zone. Or you want to make sure you're putting your fence in the right place. Or the city wants to add a side walk, but has to keep it inside the easment. or they're adding curbs and want to be sure the water will drain. There's hunderds of reasons to have surveying done.

Schris22

Ah that helps, all those examples.

Thanks unc2701 and heiney9.

Always see them and wonder what their doing.

Chris

currently on howstuffworks.com reading on military snipers. Just trying to find the answer to why military sniper rifles and some long range rifles would still use bolt action when it seems like a semi auto would be much more effective in time and have same performance?

unc2701

It keeps the breech sealed for the full time that the bullet is in the barrel. Also, the action movement doesn't knock the aim off that way.

cfrizz

Now explain it again in PLAIN ENGLISH!!!:D

WHT is a metes, prime meridian, & the whole 3 paragraph??? :eek:

And why are they always putting these bright florescent orange lines on the street & then never do anything with them???

heiney9 wrote:

Q1-That is a survey crew. They are doing metes and bounds measurements of parcels of land. If it's in a subdivision then it could typically be lot/block notations. I'm in the title insurance business. If you own a home/property your deed and mortgage have to have a "legal" description. Surveying property is a way of breaking it up for each individual person to own. That's what a survey crew does. If it's a city crew then they are on city/state business.

They are measurements usually based on the prime meridian, Expressed as degrees, minutes and seconds. Basically logitude and lattitude measurements, again unless it's in a sub, then the subdivision has been plated and then they refer to a lot/block in a particular subdivision.

ie; Lot 15 in Block 7 of RockRiver subdivision a sub of part of the Northwest Quarter of Section 14 Township 24 North Range 5 East of the 4th Principle Meridian....etc.

Land is essentially set up on complicated 2-d grid, a survey tells you exactly in words and measurements where the land is located.

H9

P.s. Sorry for the long explanation.

jcaut

cfrizz wrote:

And why are they always putting these bright florescent orange lines on the street & then never do anything with them???

I'm not positive that I know what you're referring to, but perhaps they're marking something (telephone lines, gas lines, underground electric :eek: , etc.) in an area where they're going to be digging. I work for a water utility in a small town, and you wouldn't believe how many times a day we have to go locate our water lines for someone, or have the gas company or telephone company come locate their lines for us. Perhaps that's what you're seeing.


Now he's reading about military snipers! I'm getting worried about Schris over here.

bobman1235

cfrizz wrote:

And why are they always putting these bright florescent orange lines on the street & then never do anything with them???

They put them there so they don't accidENTALLY do something with them. Places like digsafe come out and say "there's a phone line here, don't dig unless you want everyone to hate you."


I'm still curious about the "counters" that SChris mentioned in his first post. What are they counting? Wheels? For what purpose? I wouldn't think they'd work that well on a multi-lane highway.... if two or more vehicles went across at once, how do you know there were two?

Early B.

bobman1235 wrote:

I'm still curious about the "counters" that SChris mentioned in his first post. What are they counting? Wheels? For what purpose? I wouldn't think they'd work that well on a multi-lane highway.... if two or more vehicles went across at once, how do you know there were two?

Traffic engineers are counting cars. Gotta count cars if you're planning future road construction or to determine the need for increasing the number of lanes, or the need to install more stop lights, etc. An exact count is not necessary.

unc2701

They're counting wheels. Usually they'll sample to get an estimate of the ratio of 2+ axel trucks, then look at the counter to get the full number. Some of the counters can detect multiple simultaneous hits. Also, they'll do more than one counter for multilanes where there's a turn lane, etc. I had to do some stuff with traffic counts, air pollution & GIS awhile back.

.Jon

ive alwats wondered. hypotheticly, that if an imaginary object was traveling forward at whatever speed, could it suddenly start going backwards as fast as possible and never reach a speed of 0? like, for somethng to be going forwards, then reverse, at some point it would have to be at a speed of zero right? or if it did it fast enough could it go from say 1000mph forwards to 1000mph reverse without ever hitting zero? or am i crazy

jdhdiggs

.Jon wrote:

ive alwats wondered. hypotheticly, that if an imaginary object was traveling forward at whatever speed, could it suddenly start going backwards as fast as possible and never reach a speed of 0? like, for somethng to be going forwards, then reverse, at some point it would have to be at a speed of zero right? or if it did it fast enough could it go from say 1000mph forwards to 1000mph reverse without ever hitting zero? or am i crazy

Light does that, if you were going 99% of the speed of light and shined a flashlight backwards, that light would be traveling at the speed of light the other way without reaching 0

Or you can take the engineering approach and build in an impuls function to your fram of reference eliminating the possiblity of a 0.

.Jon

jdhdiggs wrote:

Light does that, if you were going 99% of the speed of light and shined a flashlight backwards, that light would be traveling at the speed of light the other way without reaching 0

I see what your saying, but im talking about aceleration. For one object to go forwards, wouldent it have to stop when it starts accelerating the other way?

Disc Jockey

Yes, at some point when you switch directions your velocity will be zero. It may only be a fraction of a second if you did it really fast but at some point you will be stopped.

Impulse functions don't exist in nature so not really relevant. Kinda like stating that you can never get from point a to point b due to Zeno's paradox.

DJ

bobman1235

.Jon wrote:

I see what your saying, but im talking about aceleration. For one object to go forwards, wouldent it have to stop when it starts accelerating the other way?

Short answer, yes. Speed is linear, no matter how you look at it. It's been too long since i took physics to make this post sound intelligent, but I can say with full confidence that you have to come to a complete stop at least "instantaneously" before you start accelerating in the opposite direction.

.Jon

thanks everyone! Ive thought about that forever.

BIZILL

as for the pillow and gun question, i'm sure it would help keep the brain and skull matter splatter down to a minimum.

heiney9

Schris22 wrote:

So those guys check boundries/borders of property? They would only do this on new property though, because your long/lat and whatnot aren't going to change in relation to the prime meridian, right?

Chris

Yes and no. Many times what you see is a survey crew for a utility company setting up a new or extending a current easement. Typically on property you have building set back lines, drainage easements, utility easements, etc.

When cellular technology became big about 10 years ago all the places they put towers were deeded (leased) to large cellular corporations. In order to properly deed the land from the owner to the company they had to have a survey done and create an easement for the cell tower. Many of these were done without the property owner having a choice. They are compensated but really aren't allowed to say no.

You are correct that once a legal description is made it rarely changes, especially if you are dealing with lot/block of platted subdivisions. But many times pieces of land can be deeded off if you live on/in an unsubdivided area. New easements can be added or old easements can be modified. In one of the counties we do work for they have a nuclear power plant and you should see the utility easements they have added over the last 20 years.

Many times the county or city or state may combined two parcels of land with seperate PIN numbers (those are your Tax ID numbers) then a survey would need to be done for the new piece of land. Of course you'd have to be the proper owner of both to do this.

You may see these crews when they are getting ready to widen a road, extened a road, put in new lights or alter the current configuration of an intersection, etc. They may surveying for new drainage or future infrastructure work, etc. There are a multitude of reasons especially when it comes to a municipality.

H9

heiney9

cfrizz wrote:

Now explain it again in PLAIN ENGLISH!!!:D

WHT is a metes, prime meridian, & the whole 3 paragraph??? :eek:

And why are they always putting these bright florescent orange lines on the street & then never do anything with them???

Sorry Cfrizz....it's very hard to put it in a few words.

Metes and bounds is how you refer to a section of land that is not platted. Metes and bounds uses measurements of direction in length and width as well as minutes, degrees, and seconds as are used on a compass. Lots of trigonometry and geometry principles are used. They use a princple meridian as a constant reference because the princple meridians never change.

All property is broken into a Township, Section and Range. For the lay person it really has no significance because you can't read a legal description and then point to the property. We use Sidwell maps which are 2-d and are laid out like sections of a grid. Each Township is made up of several sections

ie; Township 1 has 1-14 sections which is desginated on a Range (measurement) between two priciple meridians. Each section (1-14) is then broken down into 4 Quarters (usually equal--unless you are dealing with a fractional quarter). So then you have the NW 1/4; NE 1/4; SW 1/4; SE 1/4 of said section: then those can be broken into 4 Quarter/Quarter sections so you'd have:

the NW 1/4 of the NW 1/4 of said section and the NE 1/4 of the NW 1/4 of said section and the SW 1/4 of the NW 1/4 of said section and finally the SE 1/4 of the NW 1/4 of said section, etc..... the same for the NE 1/4; SW 1/4; SE 1/4.

So a metes and bounds desc may go something like this (this is a simple one)

The West 500 ft of the N 1/2 of the NW 1/4 of the NE 1/4, Township 41 N, Section 6, Range 4 East of the third principle merdian all located in Your County Your State.

The township, section and range help you start to pinpoint where to begin looking.

Damn, this isn't making any sense. It's much easier to explain things when you have visual aids to help.

FWIW

H9

cfrizz

Thank H9! I actually understood THIS explaination alot better than your first one!:D

I-SIG

cfrizz wrote:

And why are they always putting these bright florescent orange lines on the street & then never do anything with them???

To add a bit more to the other explanations:

Red is Electric
Orange is phone
Yellow is natural gas
Green is sewer
Blue is drinking water
Purple is reclaimed water (for irrigation, etc. non-potable)
Pink is survey markings
White is a proposed excavation, i.e. a new underground line for whatever

I'm not sure off the top of my head what other things like steam lines might be.

Wes

I-SIG

heiney9 wrote:

Sorry Cfrizz....it's very hard to put it in a few words.

<SNIP>

All property is broken into a Township, Section and Range.
H9

Not all property is setup in the Township/Range/Section method. All of the original 13 Colonies are still on the English metes & bounds system as well as other states like AL, MS, easetern TX, and FL, I think. Louisiana is on the French system.

Coming from GA, I didn't really understand the TRS system until I moved to AZ.

Wes

heiney9

I-SIG wrote:

Not all property is setup in the Township/Range/Section method. All of the original 13 Colonies are still on the English metes & bounds system as well as other states like AL, MS, easetern TX, and FL, I think. Louisiana is on the French system.

Coming from GA, I didn't really understand the TRS system until I moved to AZ.

Wes

I should have added a disclaimer: My examples are for my particular county where I work and live. Interesting info however :cool:

Schris22

I'm going to take credit for the most educational thread.

I read about it and here is what i Found.

"Sniper rifles are generally bolt-action rifles. That means the sniper must load and chamber each round he fires. Once he has fired, he has to clear the shell casing and load another round. Though they are more difficult to operate and have a much slower rate of fire, bolt-action rifles are preferred because they have fewer moving parts than automatics. There are semi-automatic sniper rifles, though, such as the M-21. Army Ranger Sniper had this to say about how the nature of the different rifles can affect a sniper in the field: "If you fire something on a bolt action, you have to reload one, and that movement could give you away. But also, the round flying out of the rifle could give you away on the semi-automatic." In the end, it comes down to the personal preference of each sniper.

There are many different types of sniper rifles manufactured by countries all over the world. On average, they cost between $8,000 and $15,000"

Funny how audio can cover so many levels...from entry line 100 dollar HTIB to massive million dollar audio systems...What if they went all out on a rifle...well I guess engineering can only go so far...

Don't be worried about me, I've only shot a 12 gauge at clay pidgeons and that was a long time ago. Left a hell of a bruise. I guess I wasn't holding it right and I was pretty young (boy scouts)

Chris

P.S. - This is one bad **** looking sniper rifle Got the link for a sniper rifle directory from howstuffworks.com such an awesome site